AAAAAAAAAARGH!

The Freight Transport Association has issued a new guide called the FTA Cycling Code.  It is a useful idea to produce something like this to attempt to reduce the tragic and unnecessary loss of life and injury that occurs when lorries come into contact with bicycles.  The advice for cyclists is readily available elsewhere and the section is most useful for pointing out to lorry drivers that cyclists are advised that:

"Your road position should not be less than one metre from the kerb and should be further out if it is not safe for a vehicle to pass. If someone does pass you inconsiderately then you have more room to get out of harm’s way. Keeping away from the gutter will enable drivers to see you and also help you miss the drain covers and debris on the side of the road too"

My experience indicates that some of the advice to lorry drivers is badly needed.  I hate to quibble but I believe the following section should urge 1.5 metres:

"3 ‘Give a metre’ or hold back until there’s room
Many roads have too little space for cyclists and hgvs at the same time. If an hgv cannot give a cyclist at least a metre’s clearance then they should hold back. Drivers should bear in mind that cyclists are trained not to ride too close to the kerb. The Highway Code advises that you should give at least as much room as when overtaking a car."

Drivers reading this who do not have experience of cycling are likely to feel that a metre is fine and ignore the 'at least' bit.  My view, and it is one adopted in much of Europe, is that 1.5 metres is better practice and is definitely required if the lorry is overtaking the cyclist at speed.  Furthermore if a metre is just fine then that cyclist who is travelling 1 metre out from the kerb is 'an obstruction' and 'should keep in to let me pass' as has been yelled to me too often.

The reason for the title of this post is that the above picture is reproduced on the guide without any obvious indication of irony or that it is illustrating a problem.  Both the driver and the cyclist are ignoring the advice in this guide and the people who have selected the photograph do not appear to have noticed.  I am sometimes close to despair.

..and here is one that happened to me yesterday

Helmet Camera secures a conviction

Michael Stewart at Court yesterday.  Picture from Manchester Evening News

Michael Stewart was convicted and sentenced yesterday at Manchester Magistrates' Court of driving without due care and attention and for common assault.  He had pleaded guilty to both offences.  He was acquitted of the charge of dangerous driving.  After driving close to a cyclist, Neil Chatterjee, Stewart got out of his BMW car and grabbed Mr Chatterjee by the throat.  The Magistrate accepted as beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Chatterjee's account of the assault was correct and that Mr Stewart's (that he had only grabbed his clothing) was false.

Sentencing Stewart, the Court described the attack as reprehensible, serious and road rage.  The Manchester Evening News reports that Stewart was ordered to pay a £200 fine and £200 court costs. His licence was endorsed with five penalty points.  He was also given a six-week community order with a four-week evening curfew.

Stewart admitted the assault and there is no report of any previous convictions.   Accordingly had these events occurred in the Thames Valley Police area he would have been given a caution as a matter of course.  Fortunately the Manchester Police and CPS are made of sterner stuff and deserve full credit for bringing this before a Court.  Equally it is incredibly rare for a prosecution to arise from passing close to a cyclist without actually knocking him off.  Police forces everywhere will hopefully note this result.  The Manchester CPS were not afraid of erring on the side of the victim; the fact that Stewert was acquitted of dangerous driving does not mean that the decision to puruse the charge was incorrect.

"Use the cycle path!" (here we go again)

.

The driver of this silver car LC10PYB has a number of excuses for nearly killing me.  He responded to the policeman who wrote to him that I was presenting an unneccesary hazard by not using the shared use cycle path alongside this road.  He was affronted that my presence caused him to have to move further into the offside lane (did he??) than was usually required to pass a bicycle.  He was not apparently to blame at all, as I should not have been there.  He reinforced these points by asserting that his passenger agreed with him.  According to the policeman, who forwarded these comments to me, he is not alone amongst the drivers whose carelessness I have reported in expressing those sentiments.  This is a motorist's mindset that ought, as I have explained in earlier posts, to have been dispelled finally by the quashing of the conviction of Daniel Cadden.

I have tried segregated cycling infrastructure.  I tried it again this week on my way back from a race at Hillingdon when I was willing to spin out at slow speed, but I just cannot see it as a sensible way of travelling a moderate to long distance in a reasonable time.

There is a shocking irony here; that motorists many of whom are highly antagonistic to any attempts to get them to slow down in built up areas or even in some cases hostile to attempts to enforce existing speed limits(and thereby unquestionably to save lives), consider it perfectly reasonable to expect cyclists to sacrifice speed and convenience just to get out of their way or (so some like the driver of LC10PYB imply) it is perfectly alright to endanger our lives by passing by at 50mph with a couple of feet to spare.

Wessex 100 Cyclosportive. Somerset and Dorset Sunday 29th May 2011

On the late May bank holiday weekend, Pendragon Sports organises a 3 day cyclosportive event running a loop out and back in different directions each day from Somerton.  As I blogged last year I am full of admiration for those who do three days.  I cheat and do only the second day which heads south to the Dorset coast and back.
There was a stiff north westerly wind which blew us down to the coast but then slowed progress on the return leg.  Following the start, a fairly large group formed and this started to split on the steady climb out of Sherborne.  I put in the effort to cross the opening gap and stick with the front group.  This was probably a mistake as I ended up putting far too much effort in too early.  I knew that the climb out of Cerne Abbas would be a point at which I could well get dropped so I passed straight through the first feed (which at 30 miles was too soon for my needs anyway) and tackled the hill at my own pace.  The group passed me as I neared the top.  I had thought I might hang on until the hill at the coast on the Lulworth army firing range but I actually got dropped a little earlier than that on the more modest climb out of West Lulworth.
After getting to the firing range on my own, I enjoyed taking the bigger hill with the views of tanks and their targets, Poole Harbour and finally open sea.  At the top I took a quick break and another rider caught up so we two-upped to the spectacular ruins of Corfe Castle.  Here we were caught by the next group who provided well needed shelter as we turned into the wind to head towards Wareham and the first feed where we stopped for 6 minutes enjoying sandwiches, pasties, pork pies and sweets (certainly the best food I have encountered on a cyclosportive).  This group was well organised doing one mile turns at the front in rotation.  We were now 66 miles in and as I led out of the feed I  indicated I would not be able to do a mile - so we settled on one minute turns, which worked well for the next 15 miles or so to Milton Abbas.
We took the long relentless drag from there up to Bulbarrow Hill at a sensible pace altogether though I was by now definitely flagging.  At around 90 miles there was another feed.  All bar me stopped, I wanted to press on gently.  This I did and when the group came by me I did not have the energy to latch on.  I spent the last 29 miles of this 119 mile ride on my own, towards the end the next group came by me but by this stage I could only watch them flash by and limp to the finish.
Two years ago, on this event, I got a Gold, last year a Silver and this year a Bronze.  These results mean little and do appear to be subject to significant vagaries and some subtle differences in route and less subtle differences in weather from year to year.
'Officially' the route was 117 miles and my time 6 hours 32 minutes
Stats from my Garmin were 119 miles in 6:24 with an average speed of 18.5 mph.  Apparently I hit 43 mph somewhere.
A great ride, I will certainly be back though I suspect I will be sticking to one day; the following morning a repeat challenge did not seem an appealing prospect and not only because of the rain.  Those that do the three days are hardy indeed.

Sir Alan Beith's Private Member's Bill

Yesterday afternoon Sir Alan Beith spoke in support of his private member's Bill which would "require the Secretary of State to make provision requiring the fitting of equipment to heavy goods vehicles to eliminate driver blind spots; to make other provisions relating to the safety of cyclists, pedestrians and other road users; and for connected purposes".  The Bill passed its first reading.  This development, like similar proposals that achieved widespread support in the European Parliament and are now before the Commission, result directly from the hard work of the family of Eilidh Cairns.
I have said plenty on these pages already about the hazards presented to cyclists by lorries.  Let us hope that the old acceptance that lorries can be permitted onto our crowded streets with 'blind spots' will soon be a thing of the past.  I see that the Bill is also supported by Dr Julian Huppert, whose good sense I have already noted.

I am relieved to see sense being talked in Parliament after the disproportionate reaction to the unfortunate, but extremely rare, death of a pedestrian after being run down by a cyclist which led to Andrea Leadsom's private member's Bill earlier this year.

I have also seen this week on The One Show, James Cracknell calling for legislation mandating cycle helmets.  Mr Cracknell is plainly a nice guy who cycles but he is in league with the definitely non-cycling Angie Lee (who chooses to lecture children on the hazards of cycling without a helmet rather than on the dangers of diabetes and heart disease).  Despite the failure of his helmet to save him from a very serious brain injury, James Cracknell genuinely believes that he would be worse off without the helmet.  He goes so far as to condemn non helmeted cyclists for not thinking of their relatives.  What I cannot understand is where were the thoughts for Mr Cracknell's relatives on the part of the lorry driver who apparently slammed his wing mirror into the back of James's head at 70 mph?  I would be interested in a follow up story that indicates whether this driver is now languishing in a prison cell or still driving a truck.  I cannot understand why some are more focussed upon the dubious benefits of a helmet rather than on ensuring that these lorry/cyclist collisions do not happen.  I applaud Sir Alan for grasping the right end of the stick.

Rights to privacy - am I invading them?

We have been hearing a lot in the press lately about the tension between the individual's right to privacy, enshrined in article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the right to freedom of expression (article 10).  One vehicle driver (pictured) has got somewhat agitated about it on my youtube channel.

The most important human right of all is the right to life (article 2), not just my own (though naturally I attach great importance to it) but the right to life of all who venture onto the roads, as we are exhorted to do by government, and as directly benefits society as a whole including motorists.  Unhappily some of those cyclists will be killed and disproportionately they will be killled by those operating larger vehicles.  So if you do not wish to be filmed operating the controls of your mp3 player whilst behind the wheel of a large van do not pass me like this:

or (to take some other very recent examples) this

this

or, this

Almost every day I report a vehicle to the police or an employer to draw to their attention a driver's apparent total ignorance of:

Whether effective action ever results I do not know.  'Easykleen' have declined to tell me the results of any internal disciplinary process there may have been on the grounds of the driver's confidentiality.  Prosecutions in the absence of actually knocking a cyclist off are unheard of.
Statistically we face greater dangers at junctions.  However as cyclists we have no real control, other than through assertive positioning which is at best only a partial answer, over the vehicles which pass us too closely.  I am sure this behaviour drives many would be cyclists from the roads.
So do I have any qualms about 'invading your privacy' when you choose to drive inconsiderately around a cyclist on a public road?  No, I do not.

Fred Whitton Challenge Sunday 8th May 2011

I started this blog two years ago with the FWC 2009 with no inkling that events would turn me into what the media types that contact me call 'a cycling campaigner' and this a correspondingly campaigning site.  It is refreshing to get several hundred miles away from the stressed out competition between roadusers in the London commuter belt, to an event where everybody is at least aiming to enjoy a long ride in idyllic lakeland countryside.

My club had a team of 6 (down from 7 due to a nasty crash in the Masters' Race at Hillingdon a few days before).  We had come ready for the hills but possibly not the weather.  There was steady rain in the morning but by the time I started at 8am it looked as though there may be some respite from the worst of it.  However I got the torrential downpour of hail with high wind as I was tackling the first really steep climb at Honister.  The wind was still howling and the rain lashing down as I tackled the first really steep descent off the same hill when I found to my alarm that my newly fitted Bonti tyres, while virtually puncture proof, were not well suited to these conditions.  The rider behind thought I was gone and it is true I more skied than cycled down much of this slope.

I left my two clubmates I was with to recover at the Buttermere feed; they would both have come in with much better times than I, had not both their chains broken; another indication of the taxing conditions of the day.  I cautiously picked my way around the hills losing control on several more occasions before the rain dried up in the early afternoon and the roads started to dry, thankfully before I reached the monsters of Hardknott and Wrynose passes.

Time did not really matter after all this but I came in at seconds over 8 hours, establishing a trend of a slower time for each of the past three years.

An equipment review for these harsh conditions: 
 - The Ribble winter bike was perhaps a little heavier than ideal for all these climbs but I really had no option as I have moved my triple chainset from my carbon (so as not to look quite so daft racing).  I had taken the trouble to remove the mudguards but it may have been better to leave them on.  Ideally I would have a light bike with a triple or compact chainset.
-  A chain tool.  I always carry a multitool that contains one.  I did not need it but two of my clubmates could have done with one!
-  Tyres.  Go for something grippy.  I nearly came a cropper as a consequence of my unwise tyre choice.
-  Good raingear.  Fortunately my club rainjacket is excellent and proved worth its (insubstantial) weight in gold.

Will I be back?  I am always doubtful soon after completing it but a clubmate and I have already made our hotel booking for 2012, and of course we do need to secure ourselves those sought after entries.

All credit again to the organisers.  They do a fantastic job even in challenging conditions.